a tale to grab

Here’s a little morality test in two parts that I pawned off on the WonderTwins while walking to the Metro this morning - they nattered about it away all the way to the station...monkeys. I heard it while listening to This American Life on the pod while commuting home yesterday. This portion of the show was actually borrowed from another NPR program called RadioLab. Anyway…

The only information you get is what you get; don’t ask any more questions.

1. You’re approaching a railroad track and see five railway workers working on said track. A train is approaching, they can’t hear it, can’t see it, and won’t react to its approach. You can’t yell or otherwise signal the workers. When the train gets to them it will run them down and kill all five. You also see that there's a lever that will switch the train to another track prior to running down the five workers. You notice that this other track has only one worker on it and he can neither hear nor see the train; he won’t move. Same same. Would you pull the lever or not?

2. Same setup to start with: five workers on the track, train coming, etc., except there isn’t another track, a switch, or the solo worker. This time you are standing on an overpass above the track with another person, a largish person. In order to stop the train you could maybe, possibly, just give old Big Bones a nudge off the overpass. He hits the track, gets flattened, and stops the train from moving on and hitting the five workers down the track. Would you push him?

Based on the segment these questions have been posed to hundreds of thousands of random people and the findings are eerie. For the first question nearly 90% say they would pull the lever and kill one in order to save five. For the second question, nearly 90% wouldn’t push anyone in order to save the five. I think X decided that fate was fate and she wouldn’t pull the lever in the first and clearly wouldn’t push in the second. I’m not so sure about Kt. She wanted to know things like how old were they, was her little boy Q. one of the workers, do they have children, are they cute, what’s the weather like, why can’t she scream at all of them, could she send a little dog over to warn them, how many people are on the train, did I have something for her to eat, and on and on. I don’t think she would make a timely decision in either case – five die in one, five die in the other.

There was a neuro-scientist/philosopher who took on the premise behind the answers by scanning brains just as people were posed the question and answered. For the first problem there were all types of synapses as the brain quickly processed the choice; the brain clearly believing there was a choice. For the second, the brain barely fired at all; it wasn’t actually a choice if it involved pushing someone, at least as far as the brain was concerned. His opinion is that our morality may not be based on what mom and dad told us, and probably aren’t as refined as we think. He puts forth the idea that maybe we learn the ethics and codes from our animal side and that the act of ‘pushing’ someone into harm’s way is something that no one, even an animal, would contemplate. X pooh-poohed that whole idea...she does that sometimes.

Have a mind stretch.

T